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I upgraded my home stereo about a year ago. When i completed the upgrade I went on a SACD and DVD-A shopping spree. Now I have the itch again to start shopping for more titles. Unfortunately, it seems nothing new has come out! Have these formats officially died?

Browsing all the usual websites I find it's still difficult to do a search for these formats, and a brief search on this forum results in threads in which everyone is talking about the same old titles they were out a year ago! I found a few websites that do reviews but I found nothing new or of interest. Most of these reviews are so amateurish that they even forget to mention if the discs are in multichannel!

If I'm overlooking some website or other shopping source please let me know. I'd hoped that after a year things would of gotten better!

They are not "dead" in the sense HD DVD is "dead"--no one has declared either format officially out of production. However, in terms of mainstream acceptance, they never really "lived"--especially in North America. SACD soldiers on as a niche format, primarily focused on classical music, some jazz and, very occasionally, pop/rock. SA-CD.net is the place to go to check out most SACD releases (some Asian releases are not listed there, for reasons I do not know). DVD-A appears to have very occasional releases, but interest in that format has diminished far more than in SACD.

In the end, if one is a fan of classical music, SACD is worth pursuing (my personal bias is for MCH releases, for classical or any other genre, but there are some who enthusiastically buy 2 channel only SACDs or ignore the MCH layer of those titles that have it). For other genres, it may be worth it but, with the exception of jazz (which, while having far fewer titles than classical, has more than any other genre), expectations of new releases should be very modest.

I collect what I can in the genres that interest me but I've long given up my initial hope that MCH hi-res audio, in either format, would become reasonably widely accepted.

There are occasional releases on DVD-A, and somewhat more frequent than that on SACD, but Ovation is right that neither reached anywhere close to mainstream acceptance and are now, at best, niche formats.

Having said that, on SACD at least, it is certainly possible to amass a reasonable collection of music. I am not a particularly big classical fan, but even so I probably have about 100 SACDs (and about 30 DVD-As, most of which are now out of print).

Depending upon your musical taste, the entire Dead Can Dance catalog is now available on SACD (although only 2 channel) and the third Genesis box set is due in October featuring the Gabriel years.

It seems pretty clear that any hope for a broad catalog of hirez MCH lies not in a physical disc but with downloads where the cost can be minimized and a profit made from a quite limited consumer base.

Certainty and conviction are a sure sign you don't know what you're talking about! The world is not black and white, rather shades of grey!

DVD-A is the preferred format for archiving legacy quadraphonic recordings, replacing DTS. There is a somewhat active underground attempting to preserve recording from the 70s quad era. Hopefully hardware to play DVD-A will continue to be available once commercial DVD-A is completely dead.

DVD-A is the preferred format for archiving legacy quadraphonic recordings, replacing DTS. There is a somewhat active underground attempting to preserve recording from the 70s quad era. Hopefully hardware to play DVD-A will continue to be available once commercial DVD-A is completely dead.

how do you find these?

Torrents?

Regarding jazz - there is a lot of Miles Davis on SACD, as well as Cannonball Adderley and some other greats.

That collection alone is worth keeping your SACD player forever.

there is also some new jazz on sacd; hiromi, some latin jazz, etc.

classical is the sacd big gorilla, and most likely to continue issuing sacds.

DVD-A is the preferred format for archiving legacy quadraphonic recordings, replacing DTS. There is a somewhat active underground attempting to preserve recording from the 70s quad era. Hopefully hardware to play DVD-A will continue to be available once commercial DVD-A is completely dead.

I had a quad collection back in the early '70s that included a number of WEA 4 channel releases. I am surprised that most of these were never released as 5.1 DVD-A. It would be interesting to get a hold of these recordings on DVD-A...No doubt WEA would probably try to protect their property rights even though they would refuse to release the material as their own product.

Glad I stumbled upon this thread. We are purchasing a PlayStation 3 (partly for gaming/partly for it's media capabilities) and I'm stuck between spending additional money on a model that supports SACD and one that does not (other differences between the 2 as well, but this is sort of the fence for me).

In recent years I've moved most of my CD collection to lossless HDD but SACD has intrigued me for the classical and jazz recordings. It would be a want purchase as opposed to need.

I've put more into my audio equipment quality than the majority (not audiophile, but good) and enjoy listening to a broad range of music (tell me there are funk SACD's or MCH?).

Should I invest this money in the PS3 that supports SACD, or spend the savings on increasing my storage space and MCH digital music?

Van G

Carl Spackler: "The amazing stuff about this is, that you can play 36 holes on it in the afternoon, take it home and just get stoned to the bejeezus-belt that night on this stuff."

SA-CD.net is the place to go to check out most SACD releases (some Asian releases are not listed there, for reasons I do not know).

Slightly off-topic, but I will answer this particular point. As of September 2005, sa-cd.net has stopped adding new SACD titles from Asia, except for those from Japanese music companies, to the site (almost all Asian SACD titles outside of Japan are released by Hong Kong music companies). The reason given is that these titles don't generate enough interest at sa-cd.net and time need to be given to those titles that generate interest and income thru sales from the site's affiliates. However, some of these titles are available at US e-tailers such as elusivedisc.com and yesasia.com.

Click on the "Not listed @ sa-cd.net" link in my signature and you can see some of the titles that have been released but not added to sa-cd.net. There are more such titles out there but these are the ones I owned. Four new Hong Kong Universal Music SACD titles were just added last night and they can be seen at the bottom of the list. You can click on each thumbnail for an enlargement of the scans. The 4 new titles are by local Hong Kong artists that were pressed in 2003 (by Viva Magnetics, which has since went belly-up) and finally were released about a month ago. Note the narrow hinges of the early version of Super Jewel Case.

Back to the topic....SACD is still projected to have more than 500 new titles released worldwide in 2008 (excluding the ones I have in my signature link), based on sa-cd.net's numbers. The number of new releases are slowing down somewhat, but given the state of the economy worldwide, SACD being a niche format, and a lack of support from any of the major labels, the output is still very substantial.

Sorry, I'm a little confused about the talk of d/l SACD tracks. Is it possible to store SACD tracks on an HDD similar to how I would handle other digital formats? Can they tagged with information/art similar to mp3 with any of the jukebox software (iTUnes, aTunes)?

Van G

Carl Spackler: "The amazing stuff about this is, that you can play 36 holes on it in the afternoon, take it home and just get stoned to the bejeezus-belt that night on this stuff."

They are not "dead" in the sense HD DVD is "dead"--no one has declared either format officially out of production. However, in terms of mainstream acceptance, they never really "lived"--especially in North America. SACD soldiers on as a niche format, primarily focused on classical music, some jazz and, very occasionally, pop/rock. SA-CD.net is the place to go to check out most SACD releases (some Asian releases are not listed there, for reasons I do not know). DVD-A appears to have very occasional releases, but interest in that format has diminished far more than in SACD.

Correct me if I'm wrong, DVD-A has been morphed into DualDisc format as optional hi-res audio tracks. There are frequent DualDisc releases and some of them contain DVD-A tracks (none from Sony owned Labels).

Correct me if I'm wrong, DVD-A has been morphed into DualDisc format as optional hi-res audio tracks. There are frequent DualDisc releases and some of them contain DVD-A tracks (none from Sony owned Labels).

I guess so, but everytime I see a Dualdisc release form somebody who interests me it is not hirez so I don't bother.

Certainty and conviction are a sure sign you don't know what you're talking about! The world is not black and white, rather shades of grey!

In some cases. There have been (and occasionally still are) DVD-A releases that are NOT DualDisc."Frequent" is NOT a term I would use with regard to DualDisc releases (you are correct about Sony).

Wasn't the last DualDisc release around a year and a half ago? Have there been some new recent releases? My understanding is DualDisc is a dead format and ironically the last holdout was Sony who wasn't putting hi-res DVD-A on the DVD sides to boot.

What gets me is that out of print DVD-Audio and SACDs are going for $60-100 on ebay all the time. There are about a dozen I wish I had bought years ago, but I thought the format would stick and I would be able to add them later. Oh well.... You would think some marketing people would realize there still is a market for these disks and re-release some of them! I have followed the ebay market for almost 2 years and people are still willing to pay big money, even for used disks....

My understanding is DualDisc is a dead format and ironically the last holdout was Sony who wasn't putting hi-res DVD-A on the DVD sides to boot.

If some people consider SACD a dead format, why would Sony want to put a "deader" format onto its own DualDisc releases. It has always been my contention that Sony wanted to "muddy up" the format war by endorsing DualDisc. Now, when the dust is finally settling, you see that SACD is still standing.

Oh well.... You would think some marketing people would realize there still is a market for these disks and re-release some of them! I have followed the ebay market for almost 2 years and people are still willing to pay big money, even for used disks....

Yes, but the market would very very limited. The demand for SACD in this country has lowered to the point where, from all indications, Sony's Terre Haute, Indiana pressing plant is no longer pressing SACDs anymore. Any new SACD release would have to be pressing somewhere else.

Yes, but the market would very very limited. The demand for SACD in this country has lowered to the point where, from all indications, Sony's Terre Haute, Indiana pressing plant is no longer pressing SACDs anymore. Any new SACD release would have to be pressing somewhere else.

SACD is alive and well for Jazz and Classical fans. DVD-Audio is dead at this point. The number of new releases is virtually nil at this point. Anyone that just got the new Acoustic Sounds catalog knows SACD is still thriving to a certain segment of the market.

If you mean to ask what's available in the "mainstream catalogs," then the answer would be NOT MUCH. But to me mainstream music is pretty much a clogged toilet in need of a plunger anyway.

While I enjoy listening to some of the veteran material in MC sound, I'm far more interested in some new music made by people who care about music and sound rather than market share, digital rights management, and suing people.

In that regard there's a lot of new ground to cover. I have no affiliation with this site, but I get some pretty fine DVD-As from http://www.aixrecords.com.

In that respect, the DVD-A is alive and well in my small corner of the world.

We have to admit, that headline makes us a little bit giddy, and Sony seems to be betting there's enough folks giddy enough to throw down their credit card to snag its new high-end SACD player, which has just made its debut in Japan. In addition to making a bold statement of non-conformity in your A/V rack, the SCD-XA5400ES is particularly notable for its inclusion of an HDMI output, which nicely complements the usual digital optical, coax, and analog audio options. According to Sony, you can also expect nearly zero distortion from the twin R-core transformer and D/A system, which is independent from the general processing chipset. What's more, unlike many such product announcements, while this one made its debut in Japan, it's already available for pre-order from at least one US retailer (JR.com), although there's no promised release date just yet (it lands in Japan in October).

We have to admit, that headline makes us a little bit giddy, and Sony seems to be betting there's enough folks giddy enough to throw down their credit card to snag its new high-end SACD player, which has just made its debut in Japan. In addition to making a bold statement of non-conformity in your A/V rack, the SCD-XA5400ES is particularly notable for its inclusion of an HDMI output, which nicely complements the usual digital optical, coax, and analog audio options. According to Sony, you can also expect nearly zero distortion from the twin R-core transformer and D/A system, which is independent from the general processing chipset. What's more, unlike many such product announcements, while this one made its debut in Japan, it's already available for pre-order from at least one US retailer (JR.com), although there's no promised release date just yet (it lands in Japan in October).

Glad I stumbled upon this thread. We are purchasing a PlayStation 3 (partly for gaming/partly for it's media capabilities) and I'm stuck between spending additional money on a model that supports SACD and one that does not (other differences between the 2 as well, but this is sort of the fence for me).

In recent years I've moved most of my CD collection to lossless HDD but SACD has intrigued me for the classical and jazz recordings. It would be a want purchase as opposed to need.

I've put more into my audio equipment quality than the majority (not audiophile, but good) and enjoy listening to a broad range of music (tell me there are funk SACD's or MCH?).

Should I invest this money in the PS3 that supports SACD, or spend the savings on increasing my storage space and MCH digital music?

Unless I am mistaken, you will need to find the original 60GB model. I was under the impression that the SA-CD hardware was removed on later models along with hardware emulation for older Playstation titles. Is this incorrect? Did they bring SA-CD back in some of the models?

If you like Jazz and Classical, the format will give you plenty to choose from. I have bought around 200 SA-CD titles within the last year and very few are classical and about 10% are Jazz. There are some outstanding multi-channel discs out there, and some that are gimmicky and sound just wrong.

As of today all PS3 models ever made except the 40 GB PS3 play SACDs. This will get more complicated though very soon as Sony is phasing out the 40 GB version for a nearly duplicate version that has 80 GB and which will still not play SACDs. It is unclear at this point whether Sony plans to phase out all SACD capable PS3 models, though I believe the Metal Gear Solid version will still be available which can play SACDs.

London Philharmonic Ceases SACD Releases - A spokesman for the London Philharmonic Orchestra has revealed that their SACD series, which we have been reviewing, will not be continued. He pointed out that manufacturing costs for SACDs are roughly double that for standard CDs and since sales of the LPO SACDs have been extremely small, there are no further plans to release on SACD. The last LPO SACD was Britten’s War Requiem; they pressed 500 of the SACDs and still have plenty in stock. We SACD fans better take some action if we don’t want this to happen with the bean-counters at more labels!